Sure, Why Not?

A few months back, I heard on the news about a 1-year-old boy who drowned in the bath tub. The segment discussed how devastated the neighborhood was to hear it, and how they showered sympathy on the poor mother who had this horrible thing happen to her.

Here’s what happened, according to the news report anyway. The little boy was in the tub, taking a bath, and then somewhere during this time he drowned in it. The mother was home alone with him. She discovered him in the water face down or something and not responding. She called some nurse friend of hers over to the house to help revive him, and when the friend couldn’t, they called 911. Boy was pronounced dead.

That poor unfortunate mommy, right? Well, here’s some conclusions I drew from this.

1. The boy drowned because mommy was stupid enough to leave a baby in a bath tub unattended, in which case, can’t really feel sorry for her because there is NO excuse for that!

2. The mommy (as a disgustingly large number of mommies do or try to do) decided she didn’t want baby around anymore, and either walked away on purpose, didn’t pull him out when he fell in face down and couldn’t get himself up, or held him down herself until the bubbles stopped. In which case, definitely can’t feel sorry for her since she wantonly murdered her son!

I’m thinking the second is more likely. I mean, what’s with calling the friend over before calling 911? Call 911 immediately, moron! Unless, of course, you have something to hide, something the friend may be there to help you hide. Ask her if there’s any sign that he was held down in the water, or any other sign that it looks like anything other than an accident. Then, when it looks like it won’t look like murder, call 911. And rather than spending the rest of your life in a crappy prison cell where you belong, you get assloads of people feeling sorry for you and wishing you well, being all understanding that such horrible accidents can happen to an innocent mother.

I mean, how can you come to any possible conclusion other than that she intentionally killed the boy? True, there’s not really any way to prove it without a doubt, but that’s the issue.

Let’s look at another very sad situation of young lives being cut short, followed by sympathy for guilty parents.

Some house burned down one time. Family of five, two parents, and three children aged 4, 2, and 1. The parents got out of the house completely unharmed. All three kids died. Naturally, the outpouring of support followed, pitying the poor parents who lost their house and their beloved children.

Oh, come the fuck on! They got out completely unharmed while their children burned to death?! They’re four, two, and one! They can’t exactly get themselves out! So, brave mom and dad, when running from your burning house, obviously with plenty of time seeing as you were completely unharmed, did it ever cross your minds to go grab your kids out of their cribs so they would also get out of the house unharmed? Did you think that unless you went and got them, they would not get out?

Or maybe they did think all this. Maybe it was their intention. Make the fire look like an accident, and poof! Three dead kids you no longer have to pay for, but now bring you lots of tearful sympathy from everybody, not to mention insurance money from the burnt house. Or if it’s obviously an intentionally set fire, blame a teenaged neighbor. No one will suspect you for a second, not when they’ve got a “corrupted youth” story on their hands. Even if you turned around and said you did it, they’d be more interested in blaming in on a kid.

See what happens when we live in a “parents can do no wrong” culture? Kids die. Kids get blamed and have their innocent lives ruined. Sure, no one points fingers at the mother who let her little boy drown in a bathtub, but if a 15-year-old’s mother were to die mysteriously while he was home alone with her, they’d assume he was guilty faster than a post-warranty Dell’s hard-drive crashes.